Research: Gondry and Cunningham’s diverse music videos by Jemar

What are diverse music videos?

Diverse music videos are videos which are from are from a different/alternative genre of music. These videos are used to express the directors and artists creative yet unique ideas. Diverse music videos have a niche target audience as it contains a lot of weird contents which is viewed by people outside the mainstream genre. In addition, they are also often concept based as these types of videos show no relationship with the lyrics or music therefore, it is random, different and concept-based.

Michael Gondry and Chris Cunningham are mostly known for their creation of diverse music videos. They have both obtained a lot of recognition and attention from other artist and audiences due to their success. These videos they tend to create targets a niche audience as they are so diverse that people may get confused or feel the video too weird and different to try to comprehend.

Chris Cunningham

 - 

Aphex Twin ft Chris Cunningham - Rubber Johnny

•  Nominated for the ‘best video’ at the Brits awards in 2000

This diverse music video Featuring Chris Cunningham and Aphex Twin is of course a concept based video and it is clearly represented and reinforced through the use of crazy special effects and also an alien like creature tide up in a room with a confused and terrified little dog. The video starts off with a man talking to this pet creature and it responding which indicates a sort of weird relationship. The video is to some extent quite chilling due to the use of low key lighting used on top of the dark environment in the video thorough the video and also the Alien pet creature which looks really scary and disturbing. This video may be seen as too abstract to comprehend for some people who are why diverse music videos mainly target a niche audience.

– Madonna – Frozen

This music video became an international hit around the world and even won the award for best special effects at the MTV music video awards in 1998. This Video focuses a lot on Madonna thorough the video purposely to promote her star image and gain recognition in order to increase sales. There are many different editing styles and special effects used in this video in order to help create and emphasise the concept video. These effects and styles vary from the low key lighting which is used thorough the video to create a creepy effect amongst the audience. Madonna is seen turning into animals such as a wolf and bird. This is an uncommon effect which is rarely used in music videos which therefore makes it memorable yet unique for the audience. Slow paced editing is used in the video in order to reflect the pace of the visuals and the pace of the music as this will make it more effective and also more conventional to the target audience.

 - Björk - All is Full of Love

This video called ‘Full Of Love' by Bjork’s which Cunningham directed won multiple awards for its creativity and realism as it picked up best break through music video at the MTV music award, it was also nominated at the Grammy awards for the best short film which is an outstanding achievement for Chris Cunningham. This video was about two robots who found love and is represented through the video name ‘’all is full of love’’. In the video starts off to show what it looks like to be a machine creating a robot, this is controversial as the robot is made to represents the creation of the human body. There many editing techniques used in this video such as a close up of the robots face which allows the audience to focus on the robot and recognise that it’s actually Bjork singing. As with all diverse music videos this is a concept based video and it is reflected through the choice of lyrics, music and visuals as they don’t seem to have any kind of relationship 

what so ever.

Michael Gondry

 – Gary Jules – Mad World

Although with Gary Jules being from more of a mainstream genre compared to Gondry’s, during this video conventional artistic alternative music video features were noticed. For example, the point of view shots from a rooftop looking down at people making animated figures on the pavement, this was confusing for the target audience as they didn’t know who the artist was or who they were supposed to focus on. This reflects the involvement of Gondry as he often tends to confuse the audience in his type of alternative music videos. The lack of dance moves moved the video away from being performance based but more concepts due to the lyrics & visuals not matching.

 - Mia Doi Todd "Open Your Heart

This is another strange and unusual music video directed by Gondry shows random people wearing different coloured t-shirts walking around the streets behind Dai Todd dancing in a coloured coordinated fashion. Da Todd is seen walking around gathering more people along her journey to join in. There is a sense of repetitiveness in this video as they random people seem to do the same dance routine thorough the video till the ending where they all start to twist and turn to form the colours of the rainbow. The lyrics do to some extent have a kind of relationship with the visuals as Mia is seen singing ‘’open your heart and your mind’’ which reflects the different colours used in the film and can be interpreted to represent everyone being different in their own way.

 - Come Into My World

This is another video which was directed by Gondry and sang by a famous attractive female role model, Kylie Monroe which is seen as a great promotional tool by Gondry to make music with her due to her fan base and genre of music. The video clearly represents Gondry’s involvement as Kylie is seen around walking in a big circle on the street singing and every time she does one lap, everything would duplicate including herself. This is seen as strange and unusual which creates a sense of confusion amongst the audience.

Advantages of a diverse music video 

• ·         Audience hype
• ·         Controversial
• ·         Niche Target Audience
• ·         Individualism (memorable)
• ·         Abstract
• ·         Intellectual sense

Disadvantage of a diverse music video

• ·         Unpredictable (Bad/Good)
• ·         Limits target audience
• ·         No relationship Formed between Artist/Audience
• ·         Seen as weird and bizarre (Lose audience)

I believe the diverse music should stay well away from the mainstream music culture due to the weird and confusing elements about it which will be too abstract from a majority of the mainstream audience to comprehend. The main stream music culture and diverse music are both of different worlds and should stay that way.

Conclusion

Looking at diverse music videos and there different directors artistic taste such as Cunningham and Gondry has given me a more precise idea of the type of music I wish to create. I will not be following the conventional diverse music videos due to the weird/creepiness which follows as this may upset my target audience who are more mainstream than the niche target audience diverse videos target.